The 1847 Crises

Charles Read ()
Additional contact information
Charles Read: University of Cambridge

Chapter Chapter 5 in Calming the Storms, 2023, pp 137-166 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract This chapter shows the role that the Bank Charter Act of 1844, interest rates and capital flows played in the two crises of 1847. The April crisis is shown to have been contributed to by the raising of an ‘Irish loan’ to provide relief in the Irish Famine in the circumstances created by the Bank Charter Act 1844. At the same time, there were demands for capital to construct railways and to import additional food, which meant that the Bank of England was forced to squeeze credit under the Act, and the Irish loan made matters worse. Capital was also attracted abroad by high interest rates in America, but the flows suddenly ceased as interest rates equalised in the two countries. This triggered a second crisis, in October, that led to the suspension of the Bank Charter Act. Many Banking-School adherents subsequently blamed the legislation for the two crises.

Keywords: Banking School; Currency School; Bank Charter Act; 1847 financial crisis; Irish famine; Railway Mania (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palscp:978-3-031-11914-9_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9783031119149

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-11914-9_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Studies in Economic History from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().